It has been almost a decade since Yair Lapid became a lawmaker. He first joined the Knesset based on economic and civil agendas, similar to his father's Shinui faction, and the even earlier Liberal and General Zionists parties.
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Economic and civil agendas should be of great interest to the population. After all, they cannot possibly keep track of the multitude of IDF generals who have entered politics in the last decade in search of a second career and additional pension.
While a lot can be said about Lapid about his several-decades-long journalism career and decade in the Knesset, nothing can be said about the generals except that they were generals.
Can anyone really tell what one view Benny Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi, and Gadi Eisenkot hold? Of course not, and it's not by chance. The political strategy of the generals is based on what psychologists call "projection."
Gantz doesn't need the public to know his position on matters such as costs, housing, education, or transportation. What he needs is for them to identify with him sociologically. Anything a general says will only hurt him.
In this sense, Lapid is distinctly different from the generals in the center-Left camp. He has an opinion and a position on everything, and he even wrote a book about his political doctrine called "A Journey to Our Future". Find it alongside Naftali Bennett's "How to Beat a Pandemic" and Moshe Feiglin's "To be a Free Jew" at your local second-hand bookstore.
Lapid also fought corruption and in 2017 proposed a law that banned coalition funds. But the day he made it into the government, he forgot his own initiative and reportedly began handing out large sums not only to his coalition partners but also to extortionists within his own faction, Yesh Atid.
He also promised a government of 18 ministers alone, which he too forgot the moment he became prime minister.
If in the past, he justified such failures with political constraints, today Lapid heads the interim government, where one word of his could reduce the coalition and save tens of millions of shekels in the process.
He did not fulfill his promises with regard to the Jewish National Fund, the bill preventing a criminal defendant from forming a government, the term limit, and so on and so on.
Strengthen the Knesset? Lapid has done the exact opposite.
The tragedy of Israeli politics is reflected by the fact that the interests of the liberal secular center are represented by alternating generals with pension considerations and on-call conservatives who think in 140 Twitter characters.
The center must return to representing its constituents and not the personal interests of those elected.
As for Lapid, the prime minister has taught us how large the gap could be between what a charismatic leader promises to do when he is elected and what he will actually do.
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